‘“I am afraid that I am very ignorant or perhaps I may be deficient”: men, masculinity and sex in post-independence Ireland, c.1922-1940'

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dc.check.date2031-12-31
dc.contributor.advisorBorgonovo, John
dc.contributor.advisorO'Riordan, Maeve
dc.contributor.authorFreegrove, Shannonen
dc.contributor.funderResearch Ireland
dc.date.accessioned2026-09-28T15:03:50Z
dc.date.available2026-09-28T15:03:50Z
dc.date.issued2026-01-02
dc.date.submitted2026-01-02
dc.description.abstractPost-independence Ireland’s gender order, while patriarchal, was far from uncomplicated. While Irish gender history has rightly given sustained attention to women’s repression and resistance, the lived emotional and sexual experiences of ‘ordinary’ men have been overlooked. This thesis explores Irish masculinity in relation to sexuality, family and contraception through the exploration of three source bases: letters to British birth control advocate Marie Stopes, the ethnographic Kimball collection and an archived collection of life histories conducted with men born between 1916 and 1934. Using these sources, I argue that Irish Free State masculinity imposed a set of impossible and contradictory burdens on men. Although the political and economic structures of early twentieth-century Ireland remained male dominated, ‘ordinary’ men were subject to rigid ideals of heterosexuality, respectability, restraint and Catholic morality. By employing sexuality as a key analytical lens, this research highlights the gap between institutional and individual power. Men were indeed positioned as providers and household heads, but many also experienced profound vulnerability: the shame and isolation of bachelorhood, the anxieties of sexual performance and the burdens of large families. In response, men adopted pragmatic and flexible strategies, drawing on male authority to work within and around these demands. These responses reveal the extent to which masculine authority could itself become a mechanism through which men negotiated and occasionally circumvented institutional control. By exploring these complexities, this thesis contributes to scholarship that understands patriarchy as a system capable of both privileging and constraining men, while still recognising the inequalities and violences it produced for women. In doing so, it offers a new lens through which to understand the gendered dynamics of the Irish Free State.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationFreegrove, S. 2026. ‘“I am afraid that I am very ignorant or perhaps I may be deficient”: men, masculinity and sex in post-independence Ireland, c.1922-1940'. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
dc.identifier.endpage210
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/19348
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.relation.projectResearch Ireland (Grant no. GOIPG/2022/1739)
dc.rights© 2026, Shannon Freegrove.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectMasculinity
dc.subjectGender
dc.subjectSexuality
dc.subjectIrish Free State
dc.title‘“I am afraid that I am very ignorant or perhaps I may be deficient”: men, masculinity and sex in post-independence Ireland, c.1922-1940'
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophyen
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